


Fly-By-Night

by Manna



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-15
Updated: 2010-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-06 08:06:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manna/pseuds/Manna





	Fly-By-Night

The door to the shower room crashed open and then slammed shut. Tynus dropped the soap and swore. If this was another unannounced security search of the base he would...well, there wasn't a great deal he _could_ do, although tearing a strip off the guard who'd burst in would at least make him feel better.

Forgetting the lack of dignity inherent in confronting armed men while one is wet and naked, he opened the shower cubicle door and stepped out. "What the—"

He stopped. A tall young man in space command uniform stood by the door, panting and slightly flushed, both of which conditions improved his already considerable charms.

"Sorry. The 'occupied' light must be broken." The stranger smiled ingratiatingly. "I hope you don't mind?"

Tynus very definitely didn't. However, before he could say anything someone banged on the door. The young man's eyes widened and he shot past Tynus into the still-running shower.

The hammering repeated itself, growing louder. This time, a dressed confrontation seemed like a better idea. Tynus picked up a towel, wrapped it round his waist, put his dressing gown on over the top, and opened the door.

The sight was intimidating enough that Tynus felt tempted to dive back into the shower himself. Hand still raised, the broad-shouldered officer outside opened his mouth, then frowned. He stayed in the pose, fist clenched, feet braced apart, while Thought visibly took place. Then he lowered his arm.

"Have you seen a lieutenant?" The man craned his neck, trying to see past Tynus. "I thought he ducked in here."

"No, sorry. I heard footsteps outside a minute ago, heading?" Tynus waved vaguely right.

The officer gave him a suspicious stare, which smoothed away when Tynus stepped back from the door in a tacit invitation for the man to search the bathroom.

"Thanks," the officer said.

Tynus closed the door. Behind him, the shower stopped and a voice said, "Oh, hell. Now what do I do?"

"My quarters are only a couple of doors away," Tynus said.

~~~

Once inside, Tynus's unexpected visitor stood in the centre of the living room, dripping apologetically.

The young man's uniform clung to him, his wet hair already starting to spring back into a mass of curls. Tynus gave himself as long as he dared to look—longer than was really polite, but not so long that he'd have trouble walking—before he said, "Would you like to borrow something dry?"

The offer was amply rewarded by the smile it provoked. "That would be tremendously kind of you."

"The bedroom's through here." It was nice to say the words.

After sorting out some clothes, Tynus hovered in the doorway, waiting for the request to leave. However, the boy began stripping with the cheerful carelessness of someone used to military life.

"My name's Del Tarrant, by the way," he said as he started to dry himself.

Brain in gear, then open mouth. "Simon Tynus. Base technical commander."

"Oh, of course!" Tarrant nodded. "I saw you in the welcoming party when the squadron landed. Didn't recognise you without your clothes on."

Fortunately, no reply was required. Tarrant started towelling his hair and Tynus took the opportunity to stare. Slender and long-limbed wasn't usually his type, but it wasn't as if he had so many naked men in his bedroom at this Godforsaken outpost that he could afford to be choosy.

Hair dried, Tarrant turned away to bend over the clothes on the bed. Tynus stuffed the side of his hand into his mouth to stifle the moan, then abruptly took it away again.

"What happened to your back?"

"My—?" Tarrant craned his neck. "Ah." He pulled the shirt on quickly, covering the patchwork of bruises, old and fading mixed with very fresh. Bite marks and strikes from something thin and hard. "It's nothing."

Tynus paused, giving Tarrant a chance to add more clothes and hence a little extra dignity. "Rather a painful looking nothing."

"I wish I could say 'you should see the other chap', but—" He turned round and shrugged. "You already have."

"Who is he?"

"My commanding officer. Jarvik. He doesn't take well to being turned down." Wan smile. "And I don't seem to learn. As demonstrated by my ending up hiding in your shower like a damn fool when I should've been doing my unofficial duty. The novelty of having somewhere to run to for a change went to my head."

There were lots of possible answers. Tynus, as usual, picked an easy one. "Would you like a drink?"

"Love one. Or several."

"There's wine in the main room. I'll get dressed and open a bottle." Tynus reached for the cord of his dressing gown and paused. Now would not be a good time to remove the towel. "If you'd, ah, excuse me?"

"Oh, of course." As Tarrant headed for the door, Tynus saw him colour faintly. "Sorry."

~~~

"And on the other hand," Tarrant said, "if I hit him back then it's mutiny and they shoot me."

It had been a simple plan. Get the boy drunk, pour a little sympathy on troubled waters, and then—possibly, maybe, just a passing thought—take advantage of him. Easy.

So far it was going well. They'd avoided the topic of the bruises and their origin until they'd polished off a respectable amount of wine. In the end, Tarrant raised the subject himself.

"Can't you apply for a transfer?" Tynus asked casually, refilling Tarrant's glass and making a show of topping up his own.

"Yes. Any time. The request has to go through Captain Jarvik."

"Oh. I see."

"And even if I could get round him, it's not the done thing. Wouldn't look good on my record. This is my first command posting. If I blow it...and Captain Jarvik's a good commander, apart from the—" He shrugged one shoulder. "Tactically, he's a genius. Best in Space Command, when they let him be. I'm learning a hell of a lot more than I ever learned at the FSA."

In all sorts of ways. "So you have to stick it out?"

He nodded. "Besides, it's just the sort of thing that happens. Service life." The matter-of-fact tone was determined. "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the drive room."

"And you like Service life that much?"

There was a short silence as Tarrant stared into his cup. "Um...actually, no. Not really. I thought it would be a lot more fun. Join the Service, see the Galaxy. Well, see it going past really, really quickly." He looked up. "If you asked a dozen space captains why they joined up, eleven of them would say, 'I wanted to fly and the Federation has more ships than anyone else'. That's me. I want to fly. I've always wanted to fly."

He drank, switched his cup to his left hand, and planed the right sharply through the air. "Fly. Not civilian bucket freighters or liners where you can't even tell you're in space. Really _fly_. When its nothing but a thin bit of metal between you and hard vacuum, and—" another swooping dive-and-turn of his long fingers, "—a damn great big drive pushing you along through the stars. Then there's combat." He smiled shyly. "I was always rather keen on that part too. There's something really _satisfying_ about tearing through a storm of plasma bolts, don't you think?"

Tynus didn't think—his hobby tastes ran to entomology and paperwork. "So that's what you're doing?"

"Hah. No. What I'm _doing_ is flying tin-pot shuttles, tooling along on High Council escort duty, and what's called 'maintaining order'. Mostly making bombing runs over rebellious colonies, oops-you-didn't-hear-that." He tipped his head back. "Boring. Boring, boring, boring. Do you have _any_ idea how bored I am?"

A pause suggested it wasn't a rhetorical question. "Very bored?"

Tarrant drank again, and nodded. "Very bored. Exactly. You know what the last thing we did was, don't you?" He frowned at Tynus, then shook his head. "'Course you don't. Sorry. Simulated Kairos shuttle run. _Simulated_, except with real ships. Might as well have stayed at base and done it in a proper simulator and then at least we wouldn't be flying around in the middle of nowhere making courtesy calls on boring dumps like this."

Tynus could hardly argue with the description, but it still stung a little. "Sounds terrible."

"It is." He slumped down in the chair. "And it's not just the assignments. I'm a captain really, you know. I'm qualified. FSA. Accelerated programme. And I've got a lieutenant posting because it's all there was available. I hope there's a war soon. Something big. Empty a few pairs of boots. Otherwise I'll be a hundred before I'm promoted to space commander. Well, thirty at least. Same thing. God, maybe even...thirty-five." His voice dropped at the impossible horror of the idea.

Tynus winced and poured more wine. Tarrant smiled vaguely and downed most of the cupful.

"So here I am, bored witless and being buggered by someone who isn't even _good_ at it."

As they were three quarters of the way down the second bottle, and most of both had gone Tarrant's way, Tynus took a deep breath. "It is the principle you object to, or the practise?"

"Um?" Tarrant looked round and the confused blue eyes dazzled Tynus's for a moment. Then he made a face. "Oh. Both. I'm not too keen on the principle, but in this case the practic—practitioner is..." He grimaced again. "Look, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that sort of thing. If it's your cup of whatever. I just don't want to do it. Have him do it to..." He rubbed the side of his nose with the heel of his hand. "Because it hurts, y'know? He likes it like that. It really bloody _hurts_ and, I mean, I'm not a coward and I'm not frightened of him, it's just—"

He paused and had another mouthful of wine, recovering some of his poise. "Just _not_ why I joined. Not why I joined at _all_. I want to fly ships and shoot the hell out of things—that's not too much to ask, is it?" A plaintive question, not a demand.

"How much longer are you with him?"

The question scored a hit. Tarrant's face crumpled into despair. "Six months and twenty-four days. Then if I'm lucky, I'll be rotated out to a different command. Or I'll kill him. That's as long as I'm planning to take it. To the end of the posting, then it's out or—" He chopped the air sharply. "Either way, not another year of this."

He looked so young and so miserable, that Tynus reached out to pat his leg without the slightest lascivious thought. Somewhere along the line the pretense of sympathy had mutated into the real thing.

"I'm sorry. I really wish I could help."

Tarrant sighed again, swirling his wine. "Thanks."

Don't get involved, Tynus told himself firmly. Send him back to his ship, or wherever they're quartered down here. For once in your life, ignore bottomless—don't look at him!—eyes, which can persuade you do to insane things. Their owners are all cold-hearted bastards who, even if they notice that you're interested, never have the slightest intention of reciprocating and just use it to use you.

Blue eyes this time. The last ones were brown. Brown eyes and sharp, straight nose over the mocking mouth that never quite made any promises.

To hell with it.

Edging a little closer, Tynus spoke quietly. "How dissatisfied with the Service are you?"

"Right now this minute?" He frowned. "'Bout as difatiss—dissatisfied as a...as a very bloody—" He waved the cup. "Got any more?"

"Later. Let me show you something."

Tarrant drained the dregs. "If you like."

He had to help Tarrant to his feet. The warm skin contact, hand to forearm, pulse to pulse, stayed in his dreams for months.

~~~

"Bloody hell," Tarrant said. "A pursuit ship? Where did you get hold of _that_?"

"At a base like this we have to do everything we can to stretch our budget, and there's no one else out here to compete for scrap. Anything that floats through the sector we bring in, and then every few years the base sells them on. Not this one, of course—this is Federation property. We'll get a salvage fee. I assume your Captain Jarvik wants to reclaim the ship, hence the courtesy call."

To this boring dump.

"Salvage—" Tarrant ran his hands over the smooth metal, his thumb tracing down a seam. "She doesn't look damaged."

"It—she isn't. In fact, she's fit to fly. We think the pilot was killed by an unexpected gamma ray burst. Whatever it was, it wiped the computers too so we have no idea which base it came from. It could have been drifting for years."

"Mm. You don't say."

Another thoughtful stroke—strong, gentle hands caressing the curve of the hull as though he were touching a living thing. Tynus swallowed.

"Radiation always was the problem with the Mark Fives," Tarrant continued. "Bet you she hasn't had the remedial shielding installed. Let me have a look in the cabin."

Tarrant scrambled up the ladder to the forward hatch with an agility belying the empty bottles back in the room.

The sobering effect of love, Tynus thought.

"Yes. There you go." Tarrant's voice came from inside the ship. "No shielding. Idiots. These are beautiful old ships, you know. Better than the Sixes and Seven Alphas in some ways. Handle like a dream, or so I've heard. Never flown one." His voice was growing fainter. "Well, I say old. Not that old. I had a hologram of one on my bedroom wall for years. It was the fastest ship in its size class for about eleven months, until they put out the—"

The aft hatch swung open and Tarrant's head appeared. "Why did you want me to see her?"

"Well—" This was stupid. "I thought, if you were so unhappy with the Service, that you could, ah, consider alternative careers."

"You don't mean desert?"

Tynus didn't reply.

The curls disappeared, then Tarrant reversed out of the hatch. Tynus closed his eyes until he heard boots hit the hanger floor.

"You _do_ mean desert."

"Yes." He opened his eyes. "And if I made a mistake, I'd be grateful if we could walk away from here and not mention it again."

"No, no. I was just...desert." Tarrant sat down on the second rung of the ladder and stared down at the floor, frowning slightly. "That's a hell of an idea. Desert."

Tynus was suddenly acutely aware of the looming silence in the landing bay. The large landing bay. The large landing bay with plenty of places someone might hide and listen, and numerous doors someone might walk through at any moment and find a drunk youngster using suicidally dangerous language.

And it would be Tynus's fault for bringing him here. He shifted from foot to foot, wishing desperately that he hadn't started this. "You said you wanted to fly. Wasn't that why you joined Space Command? Because they had the most ships?"

"But not all the ships." Tarrant looked up. "Can you open the bay roof?"

"I can show you where the controls are and give you the code to open them. I'd rather be back in my room when the excitement starts."

"Oh, yes, of course." Tarrant stood up and brushed his hands off. "Well." He took a step forwards, offering his hand, then had to grab backwards for the ladder as he stumbled. "Whoops!"

Visions of the ship crashing on take-off. Visions of Tarrant found alive and far too talkative in the wreckage. "Are you sure you're fit to fly?"

"If I were too drunk to fly, I'd be too drunk to stand. Which I'm not." He released the ladder and spread his hands, then unleashed his devastating smile. "See? Besides, if I wait until the hangover kicks in I'll only talk myself out of it. Where are those roof controls?"

Hands clasped behind his back, Tynus hesitated. He had no right to demand anything. Apart from common decency, it was dangerous. Treason, incitement to desertion—the young man could still report him and it would be a technician's word against that of a qualifed Space Command flight officer. A base technical commander against a lieutenant true, but it would be the end of his career at best.

"There's a price," Tynus said quickly, before he could let himself think about it any more.

Tarrant cocked his head, wariness in every line of his long body. "What?"

Come back to my room until the morning.

No, just for an hour. I promise it doesn't have to hurt.

A quick screw here (against the wall, because I couldn't contaminate your beautiful Mark Five with the memory).

A kiss. That's all. One kiss.

Tynus held out his hand. "Promise me that you'll never get caught."


End file.
